(Optional) Install a local copy of the Rendering Backend

The jsmath plugin for DokuWiki does not render the LaTeX-code itself. Instead it uses a JavaScript backend that renders the code in the client's browser. Two different JavaScript backends are currently supported:

jsMath is mature software and in recent versions quite fast. The drawback is that the client needs to manually install additional fonts for best quality.

MathJax is a modern replacement for jsMath. The high-quality fonts are automatically downloaded and used if the client uses a modern browser.

The default behaviour of the jsmath plugin is to use the MathJax CDN at http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest, but you can also download and use a local copy.
You only need to install one of those libraries. If unsure, choose MathJax.

a) MathJax

To get the cutting edge version of MathJax, get the most recent version from the developer's page. In short:

git clone git://github.com/mathjax/MathJax.git

Now move the mathjax directory to your webspace. You can test your installation by going to URL/mathjax/test/

Development

Discussion

Backend discussion

I've just switched from jsplugin backend to MathJax one: it's awesome ! This plugin together MathJax makes publishing math in dokuwiki a real pleasure. And it is so easy to install both. Thank you very much ! Now that MathJax is in version 1.0.1 I think you should recommend it over jsmath now.

It would be great if there was an option on the configuration page to list extensions that should automatically be loaded. Did I miss it? Thanks.

Formula labels and references

Anyone got an idea or workaround for how to label formulas and refer to or even link to them from the text?

It's not pretty but I use a combination of bookmark and wrap to label equations. It's tedious because they don't autonumber. For example:

where \(\delta_{kl}\) is the Kronecker delta function. Hence [[#Eq. 3.3]] reduces to
<div right><BOOKMARK:eq_34>(Eq. 3.4)</div>
\[
\text{Covar}[a_j,a_k] = C_{jk}
\]
and we find that \([C]\) is the covariance matrix. The variance of a single parameter \(a_j\) is simply defined as
<div right><BOOKMARK:eq_35>(Eq. 3.5)</div>
\[
\text{Var}[a_j]=\text{Covar}[a_j,a_j]=C_{jj}.
\]

Webspace inode limit solved by MathJax CDN

Some webspaces set an inode limit for the users (maximum number of files and folders) and, if you unzip the MathJax package directly on the server, it take about 36.000 inodes; this number is really high for a lot of free webspaces, then to resolve the issue you can use the cdn network kindly offered by MathJax, by putting the following url in the field “plugin»jsmath»backend_url”: